EP Project MASTERING

Mastering

Now that the mixes are complete it was time to master the tracks. My goal for these tracks was to get them so they were sounding like one project and that from song to song they were all balanced correctly. To do this I used some basic tools to create a bitting, louder, wider and more finished sound to the tracks. This was the final process to the production.


The tools used for these 3 tracks were all the same, I just changed parameters to suit the song to gel the three songs together.

TRACK 1

 I decided to lightly compress the tracks to contain everything as I felt there was always something that was a little pokey. I wanted to be able to have full control over the tracks. I also decided to compress before I added EQ because otherwise I found that the EQ changes I made were just being changed and compressed with the compressor afterwards. This was not giving me the same effect from EQing after. I played around with some different compressors and even limiting ever so slightly but this compressor seemed to work best for this type of music. It really helped all three tracks to work well together.

With the EQ I wanted to give the track a very subtle change that really made the track fit right across the frequencies. I made a few cuts to help bring down the hi hats that blaring and a little harsh. This made a huge change to the feel of the track and made more room for other things.
I was also very quick to take out some of the bass because I figured that when I limited the track the bass was just getting turned down as well as the hi hats because they were the loudest thing in the track. If I could take out some of the bass and the hi hats this would allow me to turn everything thing up even further.
Also by taking out some of the 400Hz it helped to get the kick to punch a little more.

TRACK 3

Changing EQ for each song: 

The tool that I found needed to be specific most for each track was the EQ. This is where you could add very small notches in and out that can really change and benefit that track. I found there were a few harsh points that I could take out, usually around the 300Hz and 1K and 6K where the hi hats were. This was really good because it gave me a really balanced sound before sending it into the limiter which would have just squashed the Hi hats and not enabled me to turn the rest of the track up. i found it was important to EQ early on as well after compression for the same reasons. I would only use small notches on the EQ unless it was quite major bass cuts to even everything out.

Stereo Widener:

Another tool I used for the mastering process was stereo widening. This is a really great tool for making tracks sound really wide. I tried to use this sparingly but I found that with these tracks they sound really great when they were wide and open. This really helps the final master because it opens the whole track to sound bigger and potentially better. The difference is massive without adding this little feature.

Harmonic Maximiser:

I used this tool to give the track a little bit of a shimmer before I limited the track. This plug in boosts harmonic in a particular frequency that you set, low and high. This doesn't make a huge amount of change but its subtle and it just gives the track a more polished touch. I played around with this for a while to find the right frequencies but when its right its make a lot of difference and it really gives the track a great finishing touch.

Limiting

TRACK 2

The final process I added was the limiter. This was to turn up the tracks to make them as loud as possible but still keeping the tracks sounding dynamic and full. For this I used a single limiter to squash everything and then turn it up setting the ceiling at 0.0. I toyed around with using several limiters together but I found that they were squashing the sound an awful lot and I was getting a better sound just from using one and it was much faster. For the style of these tracks I thought that they would most likely be played in a club so I wanted to make this track quite loud and I could squash the dynamics quite a lot before it got too much and sounds terrible.

Hedley Marks